![[Home]](/wiki.gif)
Veneration For The PregnantVeneration For The Pregnant
Eugenics concerns the scientific knowledge of the laws of sex, life and heredity.
In the Name of Eugenics Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity:
At the end of the 20th century, biotechnological techniques and other agendas are making forms of human eugenics plausible. Rich in anecdote, narrative, and fact. An important book.
|
"In no period of her life is woman the subject of interest so profound and general as at the time when she approaches the sacred threshold of maternity. The young virgin and the new wife have pleased by their grace, spirit and beauty. The pregnant wife is an object of active benevolence and religious respect. It is interesting to note how, at all times and in all countries, she has been treated with considerate kindness and great deference. She has been made the subject of public veneration, and sometimes even of religious worship. At Athens and at Carthage the murderer escaped from the sword of justice if he sought refuge in the house of a pregnant woman. The Jews allowed her to eat forbidden meats. The laws of Moses pronounced the penalty of death against all those who by bad treatment or any act of violence caused a woman to abort."
"Lycurgus compared women who died in pregnancy to the brave dead on the field of honor, and accorded to them sepulchral inscriptions. In ancient Rome, where all citizens were obliged to rise and stand during the passage of a magistrate, wives were excused from rendering this mark of respect, for the reason that the exertion and hurry of the movement might be injurious to them in the state in which they were supposed to be. In the kingdom of Pannonia all enceinte women were in such veneration, that a man meeting one on the road was obliged, under penalty of a fine, to turn back and accompany and protect her to her place of destination. The Catholics Church has in all times exempted pregnant wives from fasts. The Egyptians decreed, and in most Christian countries the law at the present time obtains, that if a woman shall be convicted of an offense the punishment of which is death, the sentence shall not be executed if it be proved that she is pregnant" —Geo. H. Napheys, M. D.
by Angelique Richardson
Love and Eugenics among the Late Victorians is a fascinating, lucid, and controversial study of the centrality of eugenic debate to the Victorians. Reappraising the operation of social and sexual power in Victorian society and fiction, it makes a radical contribution to English studies, nineteenth-century and gender studies, and the history of science.
Our Posthuman Future Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
by Francis Fukuyama (Author)
A decade after his now-famous pronouncement of “the end of history,” Francis Fukuyama argues that as a result of biomedical advances, we are facing the possibility of a future in which our humanity itself will be altered beyond recognition. Fukuyama sketches a brief history of man’s changing understanding of human nature: from Plato and Aristotle to the modernity’s utopians and dictators who sought to remake mankind for ideological ends. Fukuyama argues that the ability to manipulate the DNA of all of one person’s descendants will have profound, and potentially terrible, consequences for our political order, even if undertaken with the best of intentions. In Our Posthuman Future, one of our greatest social philosophers begins to describe the potential effects of genetic exploration on the foundation of liberal democracy: the belief that human beings are equal by nature.
|
Search for books about:
|
Interested in Barrier-Free?